| CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN John Perkins San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004 |
Rating: 3.5 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-57675-301-9 | ||||
| ISBN 1-57675-301-8 | 250pp. | HC/BWI | $24.95 | |
| Page 18: | "The pro-American Mohammad Reza Shah became the unchallenged dictator." |
| S/B "Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi". (Elsewhere it's correct.) |
| Page 23: | "The history and legends of that country represent a cornucopia of larger-than-life figures: wrathful gods, Komodo dragons, tribal sultans, and ancient tales that long before the birth of Christ had traveled across Asian mountains, through Persian deserts, and over the Mediterranean to embed themselves in the deepest realms of our collective psyche. The very names of its fabled islands — Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi — seduced the mind." |
| Unwarranted change of tense: S/B "seduce the mind". |
| Page 24: | "This was Jakarta, where the enticing scent of cloves and orchid blossoms battled the miasma of open sewers for dominance." |
| Number error: S/B "the enticing scents of cloves and orchid blossoms". The scents are different. |
| Page 29: | "Now he was responsible for forecasting the amount of energy and generating capacity (the load) the island of Java would need over the next twenty-five years..." |
| S/B "the amount of energy (the load) and generating capacity |
| Page 43: | "Then the music started — the hauntingly magical sounds of the gamalong, an instrument that conjures images of temple bells." |
| Spelling: S/B "gamelan". (I've always spelled it that way, and Google supports me.) |
| Page 84: | "...the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Economic Commission. Known as JECOR, it embodied an innovative concept..." |
| Why not "JECOM" ??? (I guess that means "No va" in Arabic. <g>) |
| Page 94: | "...I managed to persuade waiters in some of the most posh restaurants in Boston..." |
| Why not "poshest" ??? (Because it's the most neat slang; it's most cool, daddy-o; like, it's the most ginchy. <g>) |
| Page 108: | "Never mind his obviously undemocratic title or the less obvious fact of the CIA-orchestrated coup against his democratically elected premier." |
| I think this S/B "predecessor". |
| Page 221: | "Our media is part of the corporatocracy." |
| Number: S/B "media are". |
| Page 221: | "In 1990, before we first invaded Iraq, we imported 8 million barrels of oil; by 2003 and the second invasion, this had increased more than 50 percent, to over 12 million barrels." |
| Incomplete unit of measure: S/B "8 million barrels per day" and "12 million barrels per day". |
| Page 226: | "1963 Graduates prep school..." |
| Grammar: S/B "Graduates from prep school". |
| Page 242: | Index entries: "hunger, x, xii, 192"; "ideals, 75"; "imperialism, 48, 139, 218"; "integrity, 138-139" |
| All I'm trying to show here is that words this common are not normally indexed. I suspect that they do have more specific meanings where they appear. For example, "ideals" refers to the slogan used by General Torrijos. |
| Page 243: | "Index entry: "Martin, Claudine," xi, 14, 22, 53-54" |
| The list for this woman is incomplete. Her name appears much later in the book. (True, that's of little moment, since pages 53-54 tell how she left Perkins' life after completing her assignment with him. It was like a spy novel. She snared him, prepared him, then disappeared: new furnishings and occupants in her apartment; no record of her with the company, the whole bit. And of course Claudine Martin was an assumed name. The only reasons I bring it up are: a) that, unlike some others, there are no quotation marks around it in the text to indicate an assumed name — those appear only in the index; and b) that if she's indexed in the Preface, she should be indexed everywhere.) |
| Page 246: | "Index entry: truth, denial of, 119" |
| An odd entry. The actual text on page 119 reads "...the United States was a nation laboring to deny the truth of our role in the world." It seems likely that this was supposed to be a subentry under "United States", farther down the same page. |
| Page 246: | "Index entry: United Nations" |
| Or rather, the lack of such an entry. The United Nations is mentioned, though mostly in connection with George H. W. Bush's term as Ambassador there. |
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